"Hard, Complex, Ugly. Yet 100 % Addicting"

Supreme Ruler 2010 is a geopolitical war game, which takes place in the year 2010. The world's economy and power balance has collapsed, and all the world's nations have dissolved into bickering factions fighting for supremacy over one another. You must take control over one of these factions, and make it the supreme one. Not an easy task, but a very addicting one.

Gameplay

8/10

Now, this is a real mind-blower. The game is so extremely complex, yet its one of the most approachable geopolitical games in years. You have so many options at your disposal (And of course a gigantic manual and tutorial to go with that), but once you master the game, it's really rewarding.

So, as said before, you are given control over one of the factions in the now collapsed world, and i do mean given control. You can control just about anything you can name when it comes to controlling a nation, from the smallest thing like how many people are allowed to immigrate to your nation, to how much taxes will be paid.

The basic goal of the game is to become the dominant force in an area over the course of the few years. This is mostly done through military operations, but it is possible to do it using a civilized way: Let all the people in the region vote for the nation they want to rule it, and if you've researched technologies that aid your people, had low taxes and been a kind ruler, they might vote for you, so you win.

There are a number of different things you can build in this game, anything from an oil platform, to a military base, a logging camp, or a coal mine. But, here is where the complexity of the game kicks in: Inflation. This game realistically represents economics, so if you just build thousands of industries, your inflation will go out of scale, and your economy will come to a crashing halt. But, if you don't build any industries, deflation will occur, on top of a wast unemployment.

But, in order to help you with this big task, you can select cabinet ministers for each major department. These are divided into different skills like economic and military IQ, and liberal, moderate or conservative. A liberal defence minister for example, will be much more likely to try to build up for sneak attacks and unconventional warfare, while a conservative one will start with a formal declaration of war before he does anything.

The departments are split into Strategic Operations, Defence Department, State Department, Treasury Department, Commerce Department and Interior Social & Research. These names pretty much speak for themselves, so i'm not going to explain any deeper.

You can choose yourself how much power these ministers are going to have, so you can make, say your economics minister have lots of power if you think economics is boring, while you let your defense minister have little power, so you can control your defence yourself. This lets you balance out your tasks a lot easier.

So, if you break it all apart, what your doing is shaping a nation the way you see fit. You can control every little detail, like what kind of training your soldiers are to get, or how much money is to be given to certain budgets. There is also the research panel, which lets your research new technologies, for both military and civic purposes. For instance, you can research better garbage disposal technologies, or you can research for a new tank, the choice is yours.

This game is really too huge to be explained in a review that will not be 20 pages long, it has so many small touches and aspects that add up to become a huge mix of complex stuff, that in some weird way becomes very approachable after you understand it (which can take weeks)and on top of that, it also becomes very addictive and not to mention fun after it's fully mastered.

Graphics

5/10

Well, this game wasn't made with a priority on the graphics. What your basically seeing the whole game is a huge map, with all these small 2D structures and soldiers upon it, with lots of symbols and fancy flashes when war erupts. Although at times the battles can look interesting, with missiles, grenades and bullets flying everywhere, for most of the time it just looks like a big explosion.

But, the graphics serves its main purpose: To make you understand what's going on. This is not a game that will leave drool in your keyboard, but you will understand all that's going (at least if you've gone trough the tutorial), and that's what's most important.

Sound

2/10

Sound? What sound? This game has no soundtrack, hardly any sound effects besides some dings and dongs when you press a panel, or constant loop of gunfire and explosions constantly running in the background when there is a war somewhere, which gets really annoying after a while. This is a game that will most likely cause you too turn down your in-game volume after a while, and turn on your music of choice instead.

Value

10/10

Now this is where the game shines, and it's complexity works in its favour for once. This game has over a 100 different factions to play as, lots of different parts of the world to play in, hundreds of technologies to research, and even more troops to train.

Sure, this game might seem a little daunting at first, but when you get used to it, and if you like the way it plays, you can play this game for hours on end. The sheer variety that's tossed at you, and the tons of different options you have make this game a different one each time.

Shortly spoken: If you like this games ways, you can play it for months and even years.

Buy Or Rent?

Definitely buy. This is not a game that can be beaten, not even fully mastered over a weekend. The only thing you will get out of a rent is a short, frustrating experience where you will understand nothing until you have to deliver it back to the store. If you buy it, however, you will begin to learn after a few days, and you can begin to slowly master this game.

Overall

8/10

This game is hard, complex, ugly to listen too and look at, but damn it's addicting, and very fun to play once you understand it. If you like this game, it can keep you entertained for a very long time. And of course, if you've ever liked a Geopolitical game before, this one has to be something to check out.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/28/05